104 Days

It’s been 104 days out of the hospital, four days longer than I made it in all of last year between hospitalizations.

Progress! Due in large part to my support system – you – who offer support to make it through the good days and bad days.

I’ve been having rocky weeks with my mood, all due to stress in several areas of my life (taxes, divorce and knee injury all come to mind). I’m missing the exercise I need to even out my mood and help with stress reduction (knee problem preventing good, long workouts). And so help from my care team and my friends has been crucial to keeping me confident, and I thank you. I even contacted my therapist from residential to get back on track, which has helped a bit.

I still have suicidal thoughts every day, multiple times an hour sometimes. It’s a curse. No one seems to know a cure or a blessing to make them stop. I suffer. And I’m ashamed that I suffer. I want to tell you that all is better now.

Yet I remain true to my commitments to this new life without suicide, despite my desire to bring it into play again. Even when I am drowning in stress, I’m not turning in my thoughts and emotions in the same ways as before. I am confused by dangerous thoughts and tempted less. Truly, a new chapter has opened up since residential.

All things considered, I still suffer and am stressed, yet I’m relying on my care team and medication, support system, and coping skills in stronger ways. The bad outweighs the good I feel, but that’s distorted, I think. Progress that I know that?

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If you see your way clear to help me pay for the miraculous experience of ending suicidal obsessions I had at La Paloma, check out my “Saved My Life” Go Fund Me page at www.gofund.me/nlckak